


In the Dust

by lionessvalenti



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future is bleak with the undead out there, but Anwen Williams finds a shred of hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dust

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my sister for beta reading.

Anwen clutched her shotgun between her legs, the barrel pointed at the floor, and stared out the window of the truck, keeping an eye out for movement. The landscape around them was grey and the dust floated through the air like snow around the abandoned buildings of what had once been the city of Cardiff. The skies were always overcast, and sometimes, if she thought back hard enough, Anwen could remember a blue sky, but she'd be the last of her generation who would.

Anwen and Roman had left camp that morning to check on the wells. The water hadn't been right for days, and finally, they couldn't put it off any longer. Roman went because he knew about the water system. His father had been the one to design it for them at the beginning, when they barricaded themselves in the walls of steel and tin, and he'd taught Roman everything about it. Now, it was Roman's responsibility.

Roman wasn't a fighter. He'd never shot a gun in his life, so Anwen went with him to protect him from the undead. Her mother had put a shotgun in her hands when she was seven years old. She shot her first undead at the age of nine.

"Anwen, do you see that up ahead?" Roman asked, turning on the lights. They tried to travel during the brightest hours of the day because the lights from the cars attracted the undead, but sometimes it was hard to see through the dust. 

She squinted and sure enough, there was a large lump blocking the road, something that hadn't been there when they had gone out to the wells.

"It looks like a body," Anwen said.

"Should we stop?" Roman asked. If it was someone who'd been bitten, they would still need to be shot in the head so they wouldn't rise again.

Anwen nodded. "We should."

Roman pulled the truck to a stop, and Anwen secured her goggles and oxygen mask. If they breathed in the dust, it would coat the inside of their lungs, leading a slow death. It was, however, better than being bitten.

They were both mostly covered, except for the tops of their heads, even though it was warm outside. The dust wasn't deadly to the touch, though it irritated the eyes and had a tendency to find its way into every crevice, like sand. Roman wore blue overalls and brown gloves while Anwen was in a black leather jacket with matching gloves over a pair of baggy green cargo trousers. 

Anwen climbed out of the truck, shotgun in her hands, and Roman followed behind her. As they approached the lump, it became clear that it was a body. Anwen nudged it with the toe of her boot. It didn't move.

Roman squatted down next to the man and checked for a pulse. "He's dead," Roman said over the radio in their masks.

"Bitten?" Anwen asked, readjusting the gun in her hands. The undead weren't going to catch her by surprise.

"It doesn't look like it. Probably from the dust. Do you want to shoot him just in case?"

She considered it for a moment, then shook her head, her plait swaying against her back. "No, leave him." They tried to treat the dead -- the truly dead, that is -- with as much respect as possible, but this man was a stranger. There wasn't anything they could do for him now.

Roman touched the man's coat, pulling on the lapel. "Funny sort of jacket, isn't it?"

Anwen wasn't looking at the dead man anymore. Her eyes were already drawn to the deserted buildings. The undead weren't creative or smart, but they were surprisingly quick. If they were inside the buildings, they could attack at any moment. "I s'pose."

"No one wears a coat like that. It's old fashioned. It's not from our time, is it?"

That caught her attention. She looked down at him, rolling her eyes. "Oh, Roman, you don't think this man is the Doctor, do you?" She wasn't sure if she was annoyed at him for even mentioning it, or just pitied him. Clearly, a part of him held onto the childish hope that the Doctor would come and save them all. "He's a fairy tale. It's something people tell their children so they'll sleep through the night. There's no such thing."

"But look at him! Look at how he's dressed! We should take him back. He could regenerate!"

"Fine, if this is the Doctor, where's the TARDIS? The Doctor can't get here without the TARDIS." Her mother had told her the stories, too, but she had told Anwen that sometimes the Doctor didn't come.

Roman threw up his hands. "I don't know! But, Jesus, Anwen, don't you want to have some hope? That's why they tell the stories. So maybe the kids can have some hope. So they don't all grow up to be like you."

"I hope they do grow up to be like me," Anwen snapped. "Because who do you think is out here saving their lives? Why do their parents get to tell them stories?"

He stared up at her, and then finally rested his hands on his knees. "I know," he said quietly.

Her mouth pulled tight, almost into a smile, though Roman couldn't see that behind her oxygen mask. She hadn't meant to be mean to him. "Come on, let's get back--"

Her words were cut off by the dead man. He sat up, gasping in a lungful of dusty air. Roman fell back onto his behind, while Anwen pulled the rifle up into her hands and shot the man in the head. He fell back onto the ground, his eyes wide and glassy.

"What the fuck was that?" Roman asked. "That wasn't the undead."

"It wasn't regeneration either," Anwen said, her blood running cold. Her hands trembled, but it wasn't from the scare or shooting the gun. There were stories, stories her mother had told only her. Stories other children never heard, about a man who could never die.

Anwen swallowed and swung her rifle into the sling on her back next to her oxygen tank. She raised her chin so Roman wouldn't know how rattled she was. "Let's get him up and into the the truck. We're taking him back to camp."

"But you said--"

"I know what I said." Anwen squatted in front of the man and slid her hands under his arms. "Are you going to help me? We need to get him out of here before the undead smell the blood."

Roman seemed reluctant to get into another fight, so he got up on his feet and helped her carry him back to the truck. They climbed back into the truck and Roman pulled off his mask.

"Why are we taking him back?" he asked.

Anwen shook her head. "I just have to see something. Don't worry. He'll be my responsibility."

Roman didn't look convinced, but he nodded. "I trust you."

She smiled. She was a leader in the camp, and she had to answer to the people. It was nice to know someone had her back. Tempers flared easily these days. There was something about a constant impending sense of doom that weighed heavily on people's mind's, and being a leader could be a very short job if the people disagreed with you. Bringing in strangers, especially dead ones, wouldn't go over well.

Back at camp, Roman helped Anwen carry the man into a private section of the infirmary, a cot blocked off by fabric partitions. They received a few strange looks from the doctors, but she ignored them as best she could. Once the man was settled on a cot, she looked up at Roman and smiled. "Thank you for this. If... I'll tell you all about it later, okay?"

Roman nodded. "Are you going to stay here?"

She looked at the man, and then back up at Roman. "There's just something I have to find out."

"Just tell me, and be honest -- do you think he's the Doctor?" he asked in a low voice, lest someone overhear them. If there was word that the Doctor had come to Cardiff, there wouldn't be rest in the camp. Roman wasn't the only adult who clung to childish hope.

Anwen shook her head. "I don't."

Roman probably couldn't help the look of disappointment on his face. "I'll leave you to it."

Once she was alone in the room, Anwen pulled her rifle from its sling and sat down on the wooden stool in the corner, hooking her rubber boot heels over the bottom rung. She pulled her plait over her shoulder and held onto it, a nervous habit from her childhood that she'd never quite broken. She wasn't sure how long she should wait. How long did this sort of thing take?

Anwen wasn't exactly patient. She preferred action, she liked _doing_. Only a few minutes had passed and it already felt like this was taking forever. What if she'd shot him on his last life? Could he have a last life? She scoured her memory for details, but she couldn't remember anything about a time limit, or a death limit. Maybe her mother hadn't known.

She closed her eyes her chin dropped against her chest. She started and tried to keep herself awake, but the truth was, waiting was _dull_. It always seemed like a waste of time. This was certainly turning out to be a waste. Maybe he _had_ been bitten and they hadn't seen it, and she'd taken care of things when she'd shot him.

Anwen was considering getting up and leaving, but she hadn't moved yet. There were porters she could talk to about burying the body behind the camp in the morning. It wouldn't be the first unmarked grave in their makeshift cemetery.

Even though she had been expecting it, Anwen jumped when the man sat up, like he had in the road, gasping for air. He doubled over and something clattered onto the concrete. She looked down to see the bullet from her rifle rolling across the floor.

"Did that just come out of your head?" she asked, pointing to the ground. As the words came out of her mouth, she realized that it wasn't the most profound thing to say, but she'd just seen this man come to life -- real life, not reanimated, undead life -- twice now, once after she'd shot him point blank in the head. She was allowed to be caught off guard.

He buried his face in his hands and groaned, taking slow, deep breaths, and now with her bearings about her, Anwen asked, "Are you all right, there?"

"From the sound of that accent, I made my way back to Wales." He lifted his head and swept his gaze over her, from her long, black plait to her clothes, still covered in dust, and then back up to her face. He grinned and extended his hand. "Captain Jack Harkness."

Anwen's body tingled. She'd been right. This was the man from all her mother's stories. The man who didn't age or die, the man in the greatcoat with the charming smile. Captain Jack Harkness. Jack. Jack, who would always come back, no matter what. At some point, someday, he'd come back. _This_ was the hope her mother had given her, not the fairy tale of the Doctor. Jack had been tangible. Jack had been larger than life in her mind, and yet somehow still completely real.

She made steady eye contact, but didn't take his hand. "I'm Anwen Williams."

Jack's smile slowly disappeared, and he lowered his hand. His eyes narrowed as he studied her face. "You're Gwen's daughter?"

Anwen nodded. "I am."

"I haven't seen you since you were a baby." He laughed. "You look just like your dad."

That was something Anwen had heard all her life, that except for her dark hair, she was the image of her father, with his eyes and his wide smile, though she had very few memories of him for herself. She'd barely been five years old when her father died, but she'd heard a lot of stories and seen a few pictures, and could recognize the resemblance. Growing up, sometimes when Anwen would smile or get frustrated and angry, sadness she saw the sadness in her mother's eyes.

"Is Gwen here?"

"She died more than ten years ago," Anwen said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. It had been thirteen years, six months, and nine days, to be exact. She always knew how long it had been.

Jack stared at her, like he didn't quite believe what she'd just told him. "Gwen's dead," he said blankly. He closed his eyes and took a few, slow breaths, before opening them again. He swallowed. "What happened to her?"

"She was bitten."

"Bitten by what?"

Anwen blinked at him. "Bitten by -- the undead. Nothing else can kill you with a bite."

"Undead," Jack repeated. His mouth hung open as he processed her words. "You mean zombies? You have zombies?"

"If you'd like to put that way. It's a disease, parasites in the brain. If you're bitten, you're infected. You'll die within a day, and the parasites will keep your body animated, so it can feed on whatever meat it can find." She turned up the corner of her mouth into a humorless smile. "But no one calls them zombies anymore."

Jack made a show of dusting off the front of his greatcoat. "I've always been a little archaic."

She chuckled, her smile widening. "That's funny for someone from the future. My mum told me all about you. While the other kids were getting their heads filled with tales of the Doctor, she told me about you. A man from the future who can't die. I thought you could help us. That's why I brought you back here."

"What makes you think I'm going to help? I don't know if I'm any good against zombies."

Anwen shrugged. "How much have you changed since the last time you were here?"

"Not much."

"Then I think you came back here to help. Even if you didn't know it."

"And where is _here_ , exactly?" Jack asked, not denying that he'd help. He got to his feet and stretched his arms up over his head. "I told them to drop in Cardiff, but they might have missed when they tossed me from the ship. I was walking around out there, but I didn't see anything familiar."

Anwen also stood and raised her chin to look him in the face. He was taller than her -- most people were -- but she wasn't going to let him think he could intimidate her with height. "It's Cardiff. What's left of it, anyway."

He motioned around the room with a finger. "And this place is...?"

"Camp," she replied. She pushed aside the partition and motioned for him to follow her. "There's a few hundred people living here. Most of them are young families. We have a lot of babies."

Jack's laughter boomed. "Not much else to do when you can't go out!"

Anwen smiled, not because it was particularly funny, but Jack's laughter was contagious. Most people didn't laugh like that anymore. "We have five greenhouses for vegetables. There's water filtration and air filtration--"

"For the ash out there?" he asked, his face growing serious once again.

"The dust," she said with a nod. "The undead, they destroyed everything out there. The trees, the plants, and most of the animals. Everything turned to dust and the dust will kill you. So we keep everything tight as a drum in here."

Anwen could hear people chattering as they passed, and she knew Jack could hear them too. She tried to silence them with a glare, but Jack gave anyone staring at him a brilliant grin.

"I guess you don't get a lot of visitors," he said.

"No, but..." Anwen could hear what they were saying. She knew Roman wouldn't have said anything to anyone, but it didn't matter. There was only one thing people would assume upon seeing a strange man, especially one in an old fashioned coat like Jack's. "They think you're the Doctor," she said.

"They're going to be disappointed," he said.

"No, they won't. You're here. The Doctor isn't."

He didn't reply, not right away, staring ahead. "What do you expect me to do?" he asked after a few moments. "Do you have a plan to defeat the zombies?"

Anwen blinked at him. "Defeat them?"

"Yeah, win. Then life can go back to how it was."

A shiver ran up her spine at the idea. She could barely remember how life used to be. A life where she could breathe the air outside and feel the sun on her face, and see the blue sky? It was a dream. This _was_ her life.

"It's not the sort of war you can win, Jack," Anwen said. "Winning is surviving. It's been this way since I was three years old. That's when the outbreak happened, the Zombie Terror, they like to call it. Millions died, and now we're left to survive. Maybe someday the undead will die out, but it won't be in my lifetime. Right now, I'm just trying to lead, and I can't do it alone."

"I'm not a leader," Jack said sharply. "I never was. I got people killed. People I cared about. Why do you think I've been gone so long?"

Hot anger coursed rampant through Anwen's body. She shook as she stared at him. Who the hell was this? Where was the Jack Harkness from her mother's stories? Where was the great man? This man was weak, and it disgusted her.

"You think I haven't lost people I cared about?" she asked, her voice loud and clear. People around them stopped talking and stared. "Every single person in this building has. It's how we live. We lose people we care about. My mother, your friend, died. I was seventeen years old when I shot her in the head after she'd been bitten. I killed her before she could kill me, or anyone else in this camp, and if you think that didn't break my heart, then you don't know anything. But I kept on because that's what we do. We survive, and every day that we do is victory."

Jack stared at her, his gaze intense, but she didn't break the eye contact. Finally, he raised his chin and said, "I won't be a leader," he said. "But I'll help you. Anything you need."

Anwen was still shaking, but she nodded. "All right, then. Let's continue the tour."

So, there it was. She had thought the hope in the Doctor was naive, but she had been just as childish in her hope in Jack Harkness. He wasn't the person from the stories, but he was what she had. If he was half the man from the stories, they were already better off.

"Is that your mum's coat?" Jack asked, nodding to the leather jacket.

Anwen shoved her hands in the pockets and nodded. 

"It suits you," he said, and what he meant, she supposed, was that she was her mother's daughter.


End file.
